Report on the International Conference of Trade Unionists
held in Oren, Turkey

Ashim Roy

The working class all over the world is facing a major offensive of global
capital. Capitalists are resorting to reduction in wages, closure of plants,
redundancies, lay-offs, subcontracting, contract labour system and
casualisation. The governments are providing legal sanction to the erosion of
the historical gains of the working class in terms of social benefits, working
conditions and labour rights. The trade unions are opposing and struggling
against these attacks of capital. At the plant level resistance has become a
daily experience of the workers. And from this humus of living experience in
many countries mass struggle is breaking out and unfolding into waves of
countrywide social struggle. But, all these struggles are not able to force a
strategic retreat of global capital. It is able to manoeuver against such
opposition and the momentum of the offensive is not waning. One major reason for
this weakness is the collapse of the vision of the project for socialism.

In this backdrop, more than 300 trade unionists met at Oren, Turkey for three
days in mid-May 1999. The beautiful and pleasant holiday resort of the Public
Service Workers' Union of Turkey on the shore of the Ionian Sea allowed the
participants to overcome the language and cultural barriers to exchange notes on
the political situation of their countries and share their unions' weaknesses
and strengths. The Turkish comrades' warmth and political passion along with
their tea and mountain music provided the cultural ambiance to discuss and
debate the orientation and strategy for enabling the emergence of a
revolutionary trade union moment.

Make democracy the instrument of struggle

For unions to become an instrument for workers' struggle democracy is
essential. The workers have to own the unions, determine their objective and
bargaining strategy, decide the allocation of resources and make the union
officials accountable to them. The struggle for democracy within the unions has
to be led by communists. They can do so only by making themselves accountable to
the workers and leading the workers through initiative, reasoning and
commitment.

The strength of the union movement is in the organization at the workplace.
The focus of the communist revolutionaries in the trade union movement is to
return to organizing and mobilizing the workers. These are the elements for
building combative strength.

The majority of the comrades in the Conference were from Europe. Their main
concern and agenda was building a class-based opposition within the trade union
movement. The focal point of such opposition is the capitulation of the union
leadership in the face of the ferocious general offensive of European
Capitalism, attacking and snatching the historic gains of the working class.
More so, this capitulation is taking place at a time when the objective
conditions are forcing radicalization of trade unions.

The European bourgeoisie in forcing the convergence criteria of Maastricht
and is relying on the principles of liberal ideology and the support of the
trade union bureaucracy to ensure passivity in the trade unions. This creates a
fertile ground for opportunism, which again reinforces passivity. For unleashing
the dynamism of working class struggle this passivity has to be broken. This is
a key task and it became the focus of the Conference, which resolved 'to make
the principles of combative and class-based trade unionism take the upper hand
again within the trade union movement.' To make this possible, a distinct
ideological trend has to emerge that openly and politically struggles against
right-wing social democracy. The left forces, including the revolutionary trend,
has to agree to restrain their internal contentions within a democratic
framework and unite to build up an independent political space within the trade
union movement. Moreover, this ideological trend, even if it wins significant
positions in the unions, has to base itself on the grassroots trade union
members. The bourgeois crisis will move the workers toward the path of
militancy.

Both the revival of class-based trade unionism and the recovery of such a
model was the unifying theme of the meeting. The discussion and analysis of the
strikes and struggles of workers from France, Germany, Spain, Korea, Turkey and
India sharpened and enriched the concept of class-based trade unionism as
distinct from the social-democratic and anarchist conception. More important was
the learning of work methods and tactical principles for engaging, developing
and consolidating such a class-based trade unionism.

The solidarity meeting was significant for the open espousal of, and
'emphasis on the need for politicizing the working class movement and the
importance for the workers of strengthening their political parties.' This is
distinct from the general trend of international trade union meetings that
depoliticise most of the issues and evade the question of party building. Most
of the participants were trade union leaders rooted and engaged in trade union
work who were also Marxist. They addressed the problem of building socialist
consciousness from trade union consciousness, developing a socialist trend from
the trade union movement and linking it with the strategy of socialist
revolution. This was different from intellectual activists reading a socialist
trend into the trade union movement or imputing socialist consciousness into the
trade union movement. For the participants, the terrain was the trade union
movement and the objective socialist revolution. The debate focused on analyzing
the process of evolution of proletarian consciousness from trade union
consciousness and defining the role that a revolutionary party plays in this
process.

Workers build their Party

The strength of the solidarity meeting at Oren lay in the recognition of the
concept of the workers building their party. That revolutionary theory finds a
material basis in the working class is a truism among Marxists. But, relating it
to the concept of workers building their party allows for a creative tension of
a contradiction to emerge in the theory of party building. This emergence of a
dialectical relationship is fresh, if not new. The meeting made a conscious
shift in the emphasis to the aspect of workers building their party. If the
trade unions have to be built by workers and the call is for workers to own it,
the next logical step is for workers to build the party. Revolutionary trade
unionists have to take the initiative in leading the mass of workers to the task
of building the party. The vanguard does not cease to exist. Only the
relationship changes. The vanguard is made by the workers and is accountable to
the workers. This approach opens up a whole new experience of thinking and
practice that is imbued with the most radicalized concept of democracy. It is
libertarian. Democracy becomes an instrument, policy and value for the working
class to build the trade union, the party and the socialist society. The
excitement of facing the challenge of integrating humanism, revolutionary
Marxism and trade unionism was there among most of us who debated the issue with
political passion deep into the night over Turkish tea.

The need of a political party to define the general line of advance and
generate a political discourse, to which the trade unions can measure itself,
had to be posed. Only then the trade union work can get crystallized as
political experience and evolve into a political trend. The depth of
revisionism, in all its variants, and the setback to the revolutionary movement
has made it imperative to generalize the experience of various communist
movements and provide a framework for the renewal of socialist theory and
practice. The meeting did not back out from this problem. In fact, there was a
constant subterranean process of relating the trade union issue to the left and
communist movement of each country. The attempt was to redefine the communist
movement with the perspective to democratize, empower and politicize the trade
unions to make it a centre of organization, resistance and struggle.

Struggle against Chauvinism

On one issue the meeting was firm and clear. It opposed national chauvinism
and viewed it as an ideology that retarded the formation of proletarian
consciousness. In the backdrop of the NATO bombing of Kosovo, the meeting
reflected a true international spirit and courage to oppose the US and EU-led
imperialist attack on Yugoslavia. Most of the European comrades were in the
forefront of anti-NATO opposition to the extent of blockading defence supplies
and organizing desertions from NATO forces. The stand of no war was not from the
position of pacifism. It was a part of the struggle in Europe against national
chauvinism. This is an ideology that chains the working class to all kind of
prejudices. Moreover, the tangible benefits and social privileges associated
with such prejudices detract the workers from the task of class struggle. So the
struggle against chauvinism is integral to building class-based trade unionism.
The meeting declared its solidarity with Mumia Abu Jamal, the black journalist
facing threat of death penalty because of anti-black prejudice. It also openly
declared support for the rights of the Kurdish people in the face of the
semi-fascist Turkish state.

The conference reiterated that the labour movement must develop an
international stance against the attack of capital on a world scale. In the
context of imperialist globalization a firm anti-imperialist position is a
political must for developing the revolutionary trade union movement. Though the
meeting discussed imperialism and inter-imperialist conflict it was limited by
the horizon of Europe, maybe because the trade unionists from developing
countries could not participate in an adequate number to articulate their
concerns with strength.

The global restructuring is being done in the framework of the global
commodity chain - a network of the labour and production processes whose end
result is the finished commodity. Capitalism today entails the detailed
desegregation of stages of production and consumption across national
boundaries, under the organizational structure of densely networked firms or
enterprises. It is over this network and not necessarily in each firm or
enterprise, in each global commodity chain, that the metropolitan capital is
seeking control.

The IMF, WB and WTO have put together a global system that allows flexibility
to reorganize the global business along the global commodity chain. Labour
flexibility is an important component that is a concern of the trade unions. In
the first place this flexibility is possible because the dominant characteristic
of labour is segmentation. Low global mobility of labour has restricted and so
segmented labour within the political boundaries of countries. Within nations,
various social institutions, both traditional and modern have a segmenting
influence over the labour market. International capital needs labour flexibility
to build a multi-tiered production chain with progressive low wages using the
segmented labour market. This flexibility is required for the deployment of
human resources in working practice and in wages.

The historic evolution of capitalism has resulted in the structural division
between the TNCs and international finance capital on one side and the national
economies of the third world with producers and labour embedded in these
economies. The struggle of the working people is taking place along two axes,
one anti-capitalist, opposing the capitalist offensive against labour, and the
other anti-imperialist, against imperialism subjugating and oppressing the
developing economies and people. The international stance of the labour movement
has to be against the offensive on the third world people, for cancellation of
imperialist debt, equitable terms of trade and relative autonomy for the
economic development of the developing countries.

Unite class-based trade unionism and anti-Imperialist struggle

The TNCs adopt aggressive policies and practices against the trade unions in
third world countries. Union activists are terminated from jobs and removed from
democratic trade unions under the threat of capital withdrawal. Most of the
production is subcontracted out to eliminate unionism and lower the labour cost.
The local companies, to remain economically viable as well as competitive
indulge in the super-exploitation of labour. The state supports this practice by
allowing the suppression of unions, repression and murder of trade unionists.

The real issue of solidarity is between the trade unions of the developed
countries and the trade unions of Eastern Europe and the developing countries.
The European trade union movement has to use its leverage and greater
organizational and bargaining strength to support unionization of workers along
the global commodity chain and collective bargaining on demands on a regional
basis. The International Trade Federations (ITFs) should legitimately become
forums for such international coordination. As these ITFs are dominated by
American, European and Japanese trade unions the struggle for building effective
solidarity actions and mobilizing the grassroots workers for such a support is a
major task for the left-wing trade unionists.

It is the responsibility of communists to struggle within the international
trade union movement to bring the anti-imperialist struggle to the centre of the
labour movement. In today's context, the class-based trade unionism and
anti-imperialism are two components for developing the revolutionary perspective
in the trade union movement. As the issue of imperialism was not adequately
dealt with in the conference, a weakness remains to be rectified. If the history
of the conference is an indicator, it will surely become a concern. The first
meeting in 1995 in Frankfurt, Germany opened the real possibility of
international co-ordination of revolutionary trade unionists. The second meeting
in Paris, in 1996, adopted the slogan of 'All together against capital' and
class-based trade unionism. The third meeting in 1997, in Madrid, defined the
agenda of labour struggle against the European capitalists' project of the
Maastricht Treaty. The meeting in Oren stood against national chauvinism and
imperialist war.

The next Conference can be with the theme of 'uniting class-based trade
unionism and anti-imperialist struggle'. It can develop the solidarity with
concrete struggle. By then, the trade union struggles in South Korea, Indonesia,
India and other Asian countries will have emerged with the vigour and clarity of
class-based unionism and become the integrator of the anti-imperialist struggle
of the people of Asia. It shall have the experience to contribute to the
international trade union movement.